Emmons 13 secretâ€™s for sound

Johnie King · Post by **Johnie King** » 25 Jun 2018 6:11 pm

Dose any of you no the 13 secretâ€™s why the Emmons Steel sounds so different An good ?

forrest klott · Post by **forrest klott** » 25 Jun 2018 6:59 pm

Cast aluminum necks and end plates would have to play a big part in their sound.

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 25 Jun 2018 7:05 pm

Seems like I remember Bobbe Seymour talking about that, a long time ago.

Johnie King · Post by **Johnie King** » 26 Jun 2018 4:43 am

Yes lee Bobby told me that there was 13 secretâ€™s but never gave me the first one when I wood say is it the changerâ€™casted parts; thin cabinet he just grinned like a Cheshire Cat.

Jeff Evans · Post by **Jeff Evans** » 26 Jun 2018 5:05 am

Dnt Undrstnd.

Lee Bobbie should be more forthcoming with the 13 Sucrets.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 26 Jun 2018 5:37 am

Johnie King wrote:Yes lee Bobby told me that there was 13 secretâ€™s but never gave me the first one when I wood say is it the changerâ€™casted parts; thin cabinet he just grinned like a Cheshire Cat.

Bobbe wouldn't tell me the secrets, either. But he did tell me that he had a PhD, that he had played on several million-selling records (including his own "Happy Steel Guitar" album), and that he had worked for Elvis.

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 26 Jun 2018 5:42 am

Donny - I miss Bobbe's stories. I should have saved my old email!

Jeff Evans · Post by **Jeff Evans** » 26 Jun 2018 6:01 am

. . . he did tell me that he had a PhD, that he had played on several million-selling records (including his own "Happy Steel Guitar" album), and that he had worked for Elvis. Winking

He was ahead of his time in the universe of "alternative 'facts'".

Jerry Overstreet · Post by **Jerry Overstreet** » 26 Jun 2018 6:52 am

Jeff Evans wrote:Dnt Undrstnd.

Lee Bobbie should be more forthcoming with the 13 Sucrets.

Me neither. I think there are more than 13 Sucrets in a pkg.

Dave Stroud · Post by **Dave Stroud** » 26 Jun 2018 7:36 am

I wonder if he counted cast aluminum necks, end plates, and changer fingers as three secrets or one...

Not tightening the neck screws down really tight is probably one of them.

If no one knows the 13 guesses, we could at least guess what they might be...

1. Cast aluminum parts (endplates, necks, keyheads, changer fingers... anything else?)
2. Thinner wood bodies
3. Not screwing down neck screws really tight (?)
4. Using older woods (?)
5. Aluminum pull rods (?) (steel doesn't resonate quite the same)
7. The nut rollers on my Franklin are guaged & steel. Could that be one or two?
8. Larger diameter pivot bar at the changer end (?)
9. Placement of the pivot point on the changer fingers (?)
10. Casting the aluminum necks to make one continuous piece around the changer assembly instead of having small bits to screw together on that end. (?)
11. Maybe something regarding the tightness of the screws attaching the keyheads/changer assemblies/end plates?

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 26 Jun 2018 8:07 am

Doing a search, I found references to 7 secrets.

I also found them listed and would reveal them; but, well...you know...

Time to research this sucrets issue now..

Johnie King · Post by **Johnie King** » 26 Jun 2018 8:51 am

A recipe for desalination

Paul Sutherland · Post by **Paul Sutherland** » 26 Jun 2018 11:15 am

The pull rods (and the push rods) on an Emmons PP are steel, not aluminum.

Dave Stroud · Post by **Dave Stroud** » 26 Jun 2018 12:52 pm

Lee, I haven't seen an actual list. Did you mean this mostly blank list? https://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/006821.html

I see speculation sprinkled here and there...

These are for sure two of them:

1.) Mass of guitar & overall mass/thickness of metal.
https://steelguitarforum.com/Archives/A ... 03479.html

2.) Harmonic feedback. Chas Smith had a neat idea that he claims made an improvement.
https://steelguitarforum.com/Archives/A ... 03479.html

These are unverified by Bobbe, but uncontested as well (plus a few good observations of the differences between Emmons p/p & modern steels)

1.) Torque on the neck screws.
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... sc&start=0

2.) Shape of necks on the underside.
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... sc&start=0

3.) Pickups mounted to neck, not body.
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... sc&start=0

4.) No flocking on the underside of cabinet & no bushings.
https://steelguitarforum.com/Archives/A ... 03479.html

I find it interesting that sustain/tone is killed by tightening the neck screws, but somehow contact with other parts is good for sustain? Maybe that's because the fretboard acts and resonates like a sound hole, with the pickup relaying those overtones through the amp, but if you tighten the neck down, that energy has no where to go where it can be heard through the pickup and amplified.

Lightweight and pourous materials are great absorbers of the energy created by a string's vibration, while heavy and dense materials are great at relaying energy to the next thing- whatever it sits in contact with (like Newton's cradle with the pendulum balls).

I wonder if it would be best to tighten down everything that the pickup doesn't directly "pick-up" (endplates, changer assembly, tuning head, etc) in an attempt to redirect that energy as much as possible back to the neck- where it can continue to ring and project the overtones that the other parts produce.

This would make sense of Chas's positive results with connecting the changer assembly to the endplates. On a normal steel guitar, the endplates probably don't re-route energy back to the pickup as efficiently as it could. The energy path might look something like this:

Energy created from string vibration---> neck resonates, creating sound & passing energy to the----> changer assembly ---> wood body ----> endplate ---> back to the wood body ---> back to the changer ---> back to the neck ---> back to the pickup.

In each of the steps along the energy path, some energy gets absorbed. How much depends on the material's mass and density. If the end plates had more mass, they wouldn't absorb as much energy, and more energy could be passed-through and redirected back to where it came from- through the wood and back to the neck & pickup.

I wonder if only certain frequencies get absorbed when energy is sent through materials, and this is why tone is altered from materials that aren't directly 'heard' by the pickup (ex. the wood body, endplates, keyhead, etc).

I would speculate that one reason some guitars have great, thick tone is because of how many "loops" of desirable frequencies they resonate. For example... Let's say a cast aluminum neck rings strong in certain frequencies and absorbs certain frequencies as well, and projects that end-product through the pickup. Well, what if the string's energy was also sent through the body, through a cast aluminum end plate with very similar frequency ranges, and sent back through the body, and to the neck and pickup. Now it's doubling up on certain frequencies, and creating a signal loop and resonance.

But the energy can't do that with parts that go "plink" on their own. The parts have to ring like a bell.

If I have two identical endplates and one goes "plink" and the other rings like a bell, it'd probably be safe to assume that the one that goes "plink" is absorbing more energy, since we know that energy isn't being converted to sound and it has to go somewhere. That's precious energy being taken away that could been sent back to the neck and pickup!

Likewise, if a piece of heavy metal rings longer than a lighter one does with the same amount of force applied, it could be assumed that the lighter one absorbs more energy- not good for the guitar...

Paul, I didn't know that but it might make more sense for the pull rods to be steel. Depends of whether a person wants them to absorb vibration or pass it on. Most people would say I'm crazy for thinking anyone could hear the difference in that.... but I believe there might be a noticeable difference for every 5 unnoticeable differences... I think that's how some steels sound so good but it's hard to tell why.

Paul Sutherland · Post by **Paul Sutherland** » 26 Jun 2018 1:39 pm

Although I'm pretty certain the pull rods on an Emmons PP are made with steel, I can't help but wonder how significant that is. The pull rods connect with the changer with the use of those skinny hooks, which are also steel. It would seem that the connection of the pull rod to the hook, and/or the much smaller diameter of the hooks, would cause a lose of some sort. Maybe the pull rods and hooks really have very little to do with the tone. Maybe what really matters is the changer finger against the body.

Consider the tone of the 4th string when you use the F knee lever. That finger does not hit the cabinet in that situation as you are using the half tone tuner to get the correct pitch. So the finger is sort of floating, like an all-pull guitar. I think it sounds a bit different than the tone of the same string when using the C pedal, which does pull the finger all the way to the cabinet. It's never bothered me when playing, but if it was the A &/or B pedal, I probably would notice.

Kevin Fix · Post by **Kevin Fix** » 26 Jun 2018 2:32 pm

I think the two best sounding guitars would have to be a Emmons or a Sho Bud. I am still partial to the tone of a Sho B8ud. Been playing Sho Buds for over 35 years now. I own a Mullen which is a great guitar but I still play out with the Bud 99% of the time. Spoiled I guess. My Bud is a Super Pro with metal necks. I have the Sweetheart of the Rodeo CD and to me their is a very distinct tone difference between Lloyds LDG and J D's Emmons. Both sound great, but I still love the Sho Bud tone.

Bill Moore · Post by **Bill Moore** » 26 Jun 2018 5:13 pm

I don't think the neck matters at all. I had a GS-10 Emmons, the student model, that had no neck of any kind. It sounded as good or better than the Emmons D-10 that I owned.

Dave Stroud · Post by **Dave Stroud** » 26 Jun 2018 7:03 pm

I'm sure it sounds fine, but I also bet there's a good-sized difference in tone, attack, sustain, etc.

But don't ask my grandpa. After having a Stratocaster for a while, he traded it in for a telecaster. I was ecstatic about it until the next time I came over and found out he had returned it. He told me there wasn't a dimes worth of difference between the two!

Some people care more about the music than finding a certain tone, and there isn't a single thing wrong with it!!

James Collett · Post by **James Collett** » 26 Jun 2018 9:54 pm

I often wonder why some mechanical or structural engineer somewhere hasnâ€™t done some kind of a vibrational analysis on a guitar model to determine where different tonal characteristics come from. With modern computer technology, it shouldnâ€™t be that difficult to run an FEM analysis on a structural model of an instrument, with material properties taken into account, to determine how energy imparted to the string affects the total response of the â€œstructureâ€, and the string as a subset of that structure. This wouldnâ€™t be too dissimilar from how a structural engineer would apply a ground motion from a historic earthquake (for example, the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in California) to a structural design to see how it holds up. Maybe then we could settle the differences more concretely between various steel guitar brands/designs.

(For those that donâ€™t know, FEM stands for Finite Eement Method, which is a means of determining the response of a complex system [structures, electrical flows through a circuit, heat transfer, etc.] by breaking it up into â€œelementsâ€, which are essentially bite-size pieces. You can solve for these elements and sum them up to approximate the response of the total system.)

Ok, nerd time is over! Haha.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 26 Jun 2018 10:36 pm

Ross Shafer has a theory, but you're not going to like it.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 27 Jun 2018 3:44 am

b0b wrote:Ross Shafer has a theory, but you're not going to like it.

And that is...........?

Tom Wolverton · Post by **Tom Wolverton** » 27 Jun 2018 5:15 am

Iâ€™ve spent my entire engineering career (40 years) performing large scale FEM analysis on spacecraft structures. Iâ€™ve done tons of dynamic analyses: frequencies, sine, random, etc. It would be a moderate-sized job to model a pedal steel, but it could be done. However it would be a pain to try and model the subtle things like screw joints that are not fully tight. But the big problem (I think) is there is no criteria for â€œgood toneâ€. The outputs from a FEM model would generate a lot of data that would leave me scratching my head saying â€œOK, what does all of this really tell us?â€. This could be quite frustrating.

However, if you wanted to examine cabinet drop or thermal-elastic changes to the guitarâ€™s tuning, a FEM model could do that fairly easily.

Dave Stroud · Post by **Dave Stroud** » 27 Jun 2018 5:23 am

One common thread among steels that are generally accepted as "great" sounding is the resonance throughout.

Could a study be done to analyze this aspect? A test like that could settle the score with things like cast aluminum parts, important contact points and materials used, and whether special contact points (ex. connecting endplate to keyhead or changer end) are substantial or not.

Johnie King · Post by **Johnie King** » 27 Jun 2018 5:45 am

Well Bob we can handle it tell us What Ross has figured out.

Ross Shafer · Post by **Ross Shafer** » 27 Jun 2018 6:08 am

now, now Bobby, don't be getting me in trouble here....Donny, Johnie....I haven't figured anything out. I do have a less than serious theory that I hope to suss out someday when I have some time...in the meantime I'm sayin', PP's do sound great.

carry on

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Emmons 13 secretâ€™s for sound

Emmons 13 secretâ€™s for sound

Dnt Undrstnd

Re: Dnt Undrstnd